


Trouble Was Her Name

by ellydash



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Noir, F/M, Interracial Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 09:54:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellydash/pseuds/ellydash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recently back from two tours of duty in the Pacific, private investigator Sam Evans and his partner Blaine Anderson receive their most difficult assignment to date: to investigate the mysterious death of a local bar owner. Once he discovers that more than one person had a motive for wanting Will Schuester dead, Evans must put together the clues at his disposal and solve the case—before someone puts him out of business permanently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

We had an agency, my partner and me. A little place above Franklin Avenue with a large scratched window facing south, like a dirty eye on a city that didn’t know or care anyone was watching. 

The two of us set up shop in early '46, soon after we came back from the Pacific. Los Angeles was booming and crime was booming right along with it. There was a sign with our names on the door of our office, nice and big: EVANS AND ANDERSON, PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS. Damn sight better than being on the force. Sure, I’d had a regular paycheck when I’d worn my blues, but it wasn’t much, and on my own I could get more dough to send back to the farm in Tennessee. 

Clients were steady in those first months, but dull, too. Mostly kids looking to find their missing sweethearts, and those sweethearts always turned up in a few hours, usually at some juke joint around the corner, puzzled as to why we were asking questions. Our jobs didn’t make us think much, but they paid our rent, put warm food in our stomachs, and kept our throats nice and damp, so I didn’t mind. 

I’d found a nice little life for myself, and I was blind and deaf to the coming earthquake about to turn all of it upside down.

What happened started long before me, but if you pressed me to find a beginning I guess I’d have to say I entered the story on an evening sometime in October '46. On that night we were having one of those unseasonable LA rains that come out of nowhere and turn your mood as wet as the streets. I was hiding out in a dive called McKinley’s Bar a few blocks away from my place, nursing a Canadian Club and making small talk with the owner. He was a fellow by the name of Will Schuester who had curls Shirley Temple would’ve envied and a smile that looked like it hurt. 

I didn’t have much to say to him, but I liked Will pretty well, I guess. He was friendly enough, and he meant no harm, even though he tried too hard to make his customers happy. Not often you can say that about a man, that he tried too hard, but there was something about Will being so eager that set my teeth on edge just a bit. 

“Rough night out there, Sam,” he said to me, wiping a glass behind the bar. Will doubled as bartender most nights. “You got any place to be?”

“Nah,” I said, and took a slug out of my glass. “Here’s about as good a place as any, I guess.” The sad fact was that I wasn’t lying. Other than my partner, I didn’t keep a lot of company. Too many of my buddies from before the war had won a slug in the gut somewhere in France. McKinley’s wasn’t much, but at least here the silence couldn’t find me too easily.

“Well, you’re in for a real treat tonight, pal. How’d you like the prettiest voices you ever heard to make that whisky go down smoother?”

“It’s going down smooth enough on its own,” I said. The drink wasn’t great, but at least it wasn’t taking my tonsils out, like some backwashes in this joint I’d had. “Heck, I sure wouldn’t mind a pretty voice on a night like this. You got live music here now, Will?”

He sure did, Will told me. He’d recently hired a group of singers to perform twice weekly and once on Saturdays, collected from dives in every corner of the city. An all-girl group native to one bar, the first of its kind in Hollywood. Undiscovered gems, he called them. The Troubletones. He wanted to compete with the burlesque dancers bringing in bonanza business a few blocks over at Sylvester’s, he said. 

I tried to keep doubt from lighting up my face like a neon sign. No point in being rude, after all, since he wasn’t hurting anybody with his dreams, but hell if any all-girl band was gonna keep lounge lizards on this side of town from drooling all over Sylvester’s gaggle of short skirts. I’d been into her joint more than a few times myself before I’d gone off to war in ‘43, loneliness driving me towards the promise of soft skin and softer smiles against the backdrop of red velvet curtains. Even though it wasn’t exactly my scene anymore—I had a good reason, one I didn’t like to talk about much—there wasn’t a better show east of La Brea. 

Maybe it was the Canadian Club, maybe it was the lousy weather outside and the way McKinley’s seemed to close in around you like a hug from a dame you didn’t quite trust, but when Schuester’s girls took the stage, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Just like he’d said: each one pretty on the eyes, even prettier on the ears. One of them caught my eye right away, a Negro woman with an up-do that gave her an extra four or five inches of height and a thick, honey-rich voice I could hear loud and clear in my part of the bar even though she was singing backup. She swayed her full hips, which swelled out each side of her dress in a way—if I’m being truthful—I couldn’t help but admire.

Their leader wasn’t anything to sneeze at either: a tiny brunette with a sound big enough for three of her. She took center stage on just about all of their numbers, and by the second one she had me hook, line, and sinker. Boy, could that girl croon any note in the book. Just as good as Rosemary Clooney, or my name wasn't Sam Evans. 

“Rachel Berry,” Will told me later when I asked the lead’s name, sounding proud as a father. “She’s a real pip.”

“Rachel Berry? That a stage tag?” It sounded like a fake name. Too cutesy by half.

He shrugged. “Didn’t ask her. She’s ambitious and she’s got the goods to back it up. She’s gonna be a star some day. You wait and see, Sam. You just wait and see. She’s gonna be a star, and you’ll be able to say you got to see her get her start in my place.”

Will Schuester was obviously biased, being her manager and all, but he wasn’t half wrong when he said Rachel Berry had the makings of something big. You could see it in her face, her body, all of her. The way her smile got real large when she sang, like she was seeing more than just the dingy little bar in front of them, the drunk men slapping the tables in time to “Rum and Coca-Cola.” The way she shimmied on the small makeshift stage, shoulders keeping better time than the second hand of my watch. The way she winked, exaggerated so anyone in the room could see it, blowing a brief kiss in our direction. 

Yeah, that dame was first-class trouble, all right, just like the name of her group said. Looking back, I guess I knew it from the start.


	2. Chapter 2

Our office wasn’t much, just a single room in a pre-war building, but the company there kept me from looking too closely at the bad wallpaper or taking in too many whiffs of old, molding carpet. Blaine Anderson had been the only other guy in my unit from Los Angeles. Another cop, too, as it turned out, and I’d had to go all the way to Guadalcanal to meet him when he’d been stationed at the Hollywood precinct before the war, just three miles away from my old joint. Just like me, Anderson hadn’t been too keen on going back to a steady gig afterwards, but I’d never been able to find out his reason. All he’d let on was that the guys in his precinct hadn’t taken to him. 

I sure couldn’t cotton on why. Anderson was a sunny fella, the first to lend you a hand with a smile on his face when things were tough. He’d sung me songs during bad storms overseas to keep my spirits up, goofy songs from the Hit Parade that reminded me we still had a home, even if it was five thousand miles away. He slicked his hair back too much and favored bowties like some goon twenty years older than he was, but hell, I’d gotten used to having him around. Liked it, too. 

One morning in early December we got a harsh knock on the door. I was busy reading the paper—movie reviews, I got a real thing for movies, especially the shoot-‘em-ups—and Anderson was turning the knob on the radio, looking for the station that played The Ink Spots or Perry Como, hoping to hum along as usual. His head shot up real quick, though, the second that door started singing instead.

“Well, who’s that?” he asked me, looking bewildered, and I said, “Landlord, probably.” We’d had a dry spell lately. The rent was overdue several days, and our appointment book was white as snow.

“Come in,” he called, shutting off the radio, and then she did.

I didn’t recognize her, not at first. 

She was dressed in a neat blouse and a dark plaid skirt, with a tight flared jacket on top just snug enough to tell me she knew how to be fashionable. No corners on her like most of the dames who came in here. This one had more curves than Highway 1 up by Big Sur. She walked in like she owned the place, with all the self-confidence of someone who’d taught herself to belong. Not too well, though. I could smell the nerves on her somewhere underneath her sweet perfume, see it in her eyes, big and worried. 

And that mouth. I knew I was sunk when I saw that perfect mouth. Lush and ripe, asking promises out of me I couldn’t keep. 

“Which one of you is Mr. Evans and which is Mr. Anderson?” she asked, clutching her handbag close to her waist.

“I’m Sam Evans, at your service,” I said, and doffed the hat I wasn’t wearing with a couple of fingers at my forehead. “This is my partner, Blaine Anderson. I guess you need our help?”

“I do.” The knuckles on the hand gripping her purse whitened, and I realized that this was no dame looking for a doll-dizzy sweetheart. This was serious business. “I need your help badly. Can I take a seat?”

I cursed myself inwardly for not offering sooner, feeling like a dumb kid. Hoped I wasn’t blushing too hard. “Of course. I’m sorry. Please sit down, Miss –”

“Jones,” she said, and took the seat in front of my desk. “Mercedes Jones.”

“Miss Mercedes Jones,” Anderson repeated. “What a beautiful and unusual name.” 

I flashed him a look. No monkeying around with the clients, I’d warned him when we started up. Especially not the pretty ones. The pretty ones were always the most trouble. 

Hell, I should’ve listened to myself. I know that now. 

Miss Jones pulled a delicate silver case out of her handbag and removed a cigarette. Her hands were shaking just slightly, and I moved around my desk to offer her a light, which she took with a slight nod of thanks. 

She said, slowly, as I pulled back: “My manager is dead. It happened very suddenly just a couple of days ago. As far as we know, there wasn’t any foul play, but I’ve been asked to speak with you in case it—in case someone else was involved.”

This was good. This was better than we’d had in weeks. I resisted the impulse to look over at Anderson again, not wanting to show the girl how excited I was for a real case, something to sink our teeth into. We were hungry after a lengthy diet of weak soup. We wanted meat.

“Do the police know anything? Have you called them?” The first question, and one of the most important. Anderson and I never liked to get our feet muddy in a police investigation. We had a healthy respect for our former brothers in blue. 

She shook her head. Even better. “We’re trying to keep it quiet.”

“We?”

“The other girls and me. We sing together down at McKinley’s Bar on Western. The Troubletones?” Miss Jones smiled and her whole face changed. She was even prettier when she smiled. I hadn’t thought that was possible. “There’s five of us. Rachel, she’s our leader, and then there’s Santana, Brittany, and Tina. And me, of course. We’re making a real name for ourselves. Maybe you’ve heard us perform?”

“I’ve seen you sing,” I said slowly, remembering, “sure I have,” and then I realized it. “Your manager’s dead? You mean Will Schuester? The owner?”

“You know him?”

I nodded.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she dug around in her bag with her free hand, obviously looking for a handkerchief. Faster than you could say Harry Truman, Anderson jumped out of his chair and raced to her side, offering her his own. She took it with a whispered thanks and dabbed the corners of her eyes gently. 

“No, no,” he said, when she tried to hand it back to him. “It’s yours. You keep it. I’ve got plenty more where that came from.”

“I think he had a heart attack,” she blurted, dropping the handkerchief in her open handbag, and took a quick, nervous drag of her cigarette. “Mr. Schuester. Rachel found him slumped over the bar. Santana said it’s got to be drugs, but I can’t believe that. Mr. Schuester wasn’t the type to take anything illegal.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Sometimes people aren’t exactly what they seem. Miss Jones, why didn’t you go to the police in the first place? Usually folks come to us after they’ve had no luck with more traditional options.”

She blinked. “Well,” she said, after a moment, “it was Rachel’s idea for us, for me, to talk to you. She was very insistent. You see, she thinks it’s suspicious Mr. Schuester died so suddenly. I told her, I said sometimes these things happen, as sad as it is, but she’s sure there’s something odd about it all. Who knows, maybe she’s right.” Her brow wrinkled at the possibility. I had to check myself from putting a hand out across my desk to touch her shoulder in a gesture of comfort. “Anyhow, Rachel believes that not everyone would be as _understanding_ as you and Mr. Anderson might be about, uh, some of the business transactions Mr. Schue made under the table. Transactions she’d prefer to keep quiet. Between you and me, keeping an exact ledger wasn’t his strong suit.”

“I see.” For once, I wasn’t pretending to know more than I did. So Will hadn’t been as squeaky-clean as he’d seemed. Illegal dealings? This case was getting more interesting by the minute.

“The thing is, he had someone. A fiancée. She’s a nice lady. Delicate. It’s been so hard on her. That’s why we’d like to keep this quiet, save her the trouble of finding out what she doesn’t need to know. Rachel’s already made the necessary arrangements. The coroner, the morgue, funeral plans, all that. The police don’t need to be involved. We’re prepared to pay you whatever fee you want, of course.”

There were too many bows tied up tightly in that statement, but I didn’t pull at the strands. Not then, anyway. “So Will had some shady trades with local sharks?” 

“We didn’t ask him questions,” she said, primly, and tapped ash into the tray on my desk. “Rachel would know more than I do. You should talk to her.”

Rachel. Rachel Berry. I wrote the name down in my ledger and underlined it a few times. She’d be my first stop. 

“Thirty a day,” I told her, rounding down five dollars on a generous impulse. I liked this girl. I wanted to help her. “And a guarantee of an extra hundred, if we pull the job. Twenty to start right now. If you ladies can manage that, we’re in business.” 

They could, she said. And we were.


	3. Chapter 3

After Miss Jones left, Anderson and I drove the short distance to Rachel Berry’s apartment. She lived just west of Ivar in some dingy two-story building. It had a fake brick façade just about as sad as her prospects for getting out of Will Schuester’s bar and into the bright lights of Hollywood.

“You ask me, it’s her,” Anderson volunteered, as we walked down the dark hallway, faded wallpaper peeling on either side of us. “Rachel Berry. Maybe he insulted her, said something to her about how she wasn’t gonna make it in this town, and she got all hot under the collar. Fed him something that made his eyes roll. Bet you five dollars that’s the way it’s gonna play out.”

I shook my head and rapped on the door marked 202. It didn’t fit somehow. I kept thinking about the look on Will Schuester’s face when he talked about this girl. There was something else here, something Mercedes Jones hadn’t told me, or maybe hadn’t known enough to tell. 

The door opened. “Yeah? Can I help you?”

It wasn’t the girl we’d been expecting. It was a tall, hulking ape of a guy, taller than me, even, and I’m not exactly Napoleon. 

“We’re looking for Rachel Berry,” Anderson said.

“Who’s asking?” 

“Friends,” I said, quickly, before Anderson could keep talking and give away his suspicions. I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot. “Mercedes Jones hired us to investigate what happened to her boss down at McKinley’s.”

The ape relaxed a little, but that look of suspicion didn’t go out of his eyes, not entirely. “Mercedes? She’s good people. Yeah, come on in. Rachel, baby? We got some company.”

I’d forgotten how small she was. A good few inches shorter than your average gal, though those heels of hers were sure trying for the illusion of height. Rachel Berry didn’t have the fashion sense of her friend Miss Jones, that much was certain. Her skirt was too short, her sweater fit her all wrong, but somehow I wasn’t noticing those details for long. It was her face that grabbed me, just like it’d done at McKinley’s several months back. That sweet open face looking for something. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but I knew enough to know I didn’t have it.

“Who are you?” she asked us, looking wary, and stood close to the ape. “What do you want?”

I took off my hat. “I’m Sam Evans, and this here is Blaine Anderson. Private investigators. We’ve come to talk to you about Will Schuester, Miss Berry.”

Her expression shifted from suspicious to pleasant, just like that. She was a real actress, I thought. “Mr. Evans. Mr. Anderson. So good to meet you. Please, please, come in, sit down. Can I offer you any refreshments? I feel as though it’s so important to be a good host, even when you’re effectively paying your guests to visit you.” She laughed. There was a note of real merriment in it. 

“No, ma’am,” I said, just as Anderson said, “Sure, I’ll take a root beer, if you’ve got one,” and I glared at him. This wasn’t an ice-cream social.

“What?” he whispered, looking hurt. “I’m thirsty.”

“Finn? Would you get Mr. Anderson a root beer?”

The ape said he would, amiably enough, and wandered off in the direction of what I assumed was the kitchen. 

“So, gentlemen,” Miss Berry said, as we took our seats in their small living room. She crossed one trim calf over the other, skirt shading them a few inches below her knees. Boy, she had great gams. I tried not to stare. “What information do you need from me? I want to do everything I can to catch the madman you’re after.”

“First of all,” I said, forcing myself to look at her face and not her legs, “I’m sorry to hear about your loss. I knew Will Schuester a little. He was a good man.”

Her lower lip quivered a little. “Yes,” she said. “He’s—he _was_ a very good man. Better than most people know. He gave me my break. I have him to thank for everything. Did you know that I have an audition at MGM next week? I just know the second they hear me sing and see me act and dance they’ll sign me right up. I’m going to be a star. You just wait and see, Mr. Evans.”

It was eerie hearing those words come out of her when I remembered Will saying the exact same thing just a few months back. 

“I’ll look forward to it,” I said, lacking anything better.

“Who’s that?” Anderson asked, gesturing in the direction of the ape. I could hear him fumbling around in the next room. “Is he your boyfriend?”

Miss Berry tossed her head. “Fiancé,” she said, lowering her voice. “But between you and me? I’m considering breaking it off after my audition. Quite frankly, I need someone on my arm at premieres who understands the importance of proper interaction with fans and the press, and Finn doesn’t care about any of that.” She looked at me, measuring me up. “You’re quite attractive, as a matter of fact. That boyish blond hair, those lips. You look a bit like Van Johnson. And as a detective you’ve probably had some experience with the press. Are you interested?”

Anderson made a small startled sound. I tried not to blush. 

“I don’t mix business and pleasure, Miss Berry,” was all I could think to say, stammering a bit. She sure made me nervous. “Tell me about Will Schuester. You were the one who found him?”

“I was.” And just like that, she was back to the quivering lip. “I found him face down right over the bar. Mercedes and Brittany and Tina all think it was a heart attack or something like that, and Santana thinks he must’ve taken a hit of something too strong for him, but they’re all wrong. Will was the healthiest man I knew. He’d never knowingly take anything illegal. No, it has to be murder. Someone slipped him something. And I think I know exactly who did it.”

“Who?” Anderson sat up straighter in his chair.

“Sandy Ryerson. He’s a real creep. Will lets—let—him sell marijuana and some other drugs at McKinley’s in exchange for a piece of the profit. It worked out nicely for both of them for a while, until Will had a hit of conscience—”

“—caused by you, I’m sure,” I said dryly. 

She gave me a look. “I have to be completely clean, all right? I can’t be expected to transition smoothly into my big break when there are _illegal interactions_ occurring on the property where I perform. Will understood that my needs came before his profit margins. We were perfectly compatible that way.”

Perfectly compatible. I narrowed my eyes. It sounded more like a marriage than a business arrangement. Hadn’t Mercedes Jones said that Will had a fiancée somewhere? 

Miss Berry didn’t flinch a bit. “At any rate, Ryerson was furious when Will sent him packing. Now he’s back to slinging on the streets. I can’t imagine he’s making nearly as much money now. If you ask me, that’s more than enough motive for murder. And—” She leaned in, cupping her hand to the side of her mouth. “What’s more, he’s funny.”

“Funny,” Anderson repeated, and cleared his throat. 

“You know what I mean. Light in the loafers.”

“That doesn’t make him a murderer, Miss Berry,” Anderson said softly.

She looked flustered, embarrassed. “Well, I know that. Don’t you think I know that? If you talked to him, though, you’d see what I mean. He isn’t a respectable person like you or me.”

Funny or not, I had to admit, the motive sounded plausible. 

The ape came back in, carrying an open can of Dad’s, and Anderson took it from him, looking relieved at the interruption. “Anything else you want to tell us?” he asked Miss Berry. 

“Just that—” She glanced between the two of us. “I want you to catch him. I want you to bring the man who did this to justice. I want him to hurt for what he did to Will.” She started to cry then, in earnest, and I’ll say this much for the ape, he rushed to her side on the couch. 

“We’ll catch him,” I promised, as the ape held her. I felt bad for giving him that name, now, even in my head, seeing how much he obviously cared for her. “We’ll make him pay.”

“You see that you do,” she sobbed into her boyfriend’s meaty shoulder. “You just see that you do.”

I believed her then. I knew that she was an actress, I knew she was good. Good enough, maybe, to make it. I knew she could run between emotions faster than a bee-stung stallion. 

I still believed her.


	4. Chapter 4

Sandy Ryerson spent most of his free time during the day in a seedy boys’ club on Sunset called the Tomcat, Miss Berry told us, and so we made our way there the next afternoon, sneaking in the back to try to avoid attracting attention. I guess it wasn’t a bad crowd for daytime on a Tuesday, maybe seven or eight men sitting around, smoking cigarettes and looking bored while an unhappy band played last summer’s hot tune. 

One of them, an older guy without much hair, leaned against the bar, chatting with a boy who couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen. I watched the kid, distracted. He was sweet-looking, a little sad, too, with a pale, smooth angel face that wouldn’t last long in a place like this. 

Next to me, I heard Anderson take a quick breath. I glanced over at him. He had his eyes fixed just where I’d had mine a moment ago, on the pretty kid, only there was something in his expression as he looked at him that startled me. Something I didn’t quite understand. Like he’d gotten a punch to the solar plexus, maybe, or he’d recognized someone he wasn’t expecting. I’d never seen that look on my partner before. If he’d been staring at a girl, I would’ve said—well, never mind what I would’ve said. He wasn’t staring at a girl.

The kid seemed to sense Anderson, because he turned his head, staring back, and the older man talking to him followed his glance. He caught my eye. 

“That’s gotta be him,” I said out loud to Anderson, realizing, “that’s Ryerson,” just as the man turned and bolted out the front door, faster than I would’ve given him credit for.

There isn’t much I like more than a good old fashioned chase, especially when I’m after someone twenty-five years and forty pounds my senior. I pounded out of that bar at full speed, Anderson right on my heels, and took off down Sunset in hot pursuit, feet slapping hard against hot concrete. Anderson had a good head start on me, and he knew the neighborhood better than I did, but I was faster, and I’d already gained a few solid yards before Ryerson took an abrupt right turn down a narrow alley just before Hobart. Lucky for me, I was expecting it, and Anderson was too. He kept going west on Sunset, and I knew he meant to double back around on the other side of the alley to keep Ryerson from getting away. 

Ryerson wasn’t used to running, though, that much was obvious. He slowed down about halfway through the alley, staggering a little, and then bent over, hands on his thighs, breathing hard. I ran up to him, panting a little myself. 

“Stop right there,” I managed. 

“I’m stopped, kid,” he said, without standing up. “I’m stopped. Haven’t you noticed? Christ, I’m getting old. My sides—”

Anderson appeared at the other end of the alley, and ran up to us, shouting, “Stop!” I waved my hand at him, signaling that everything was okay. Ryerson said, a little less labored: “You fellows need glasses.”

“Stop with the stale gags, wise guy,” I said. “Why’d you run?” 

“Couple of suits show up in a boys’ bar middle of the day, looking around? You’d run too.”

He had a point there.

“We don’t give a damn about that,” Anderson said quietly. “What you do’s your own business. We want to talk to you about Will Schuester.”

“William Schuester?” Ryerson straightened up slowly, looking confused. “From McKinley’s? What about him?”

I said: “Well, for one thing, he dropped dead. But I guess you know that already.”

The shock on Ryerson’s face told me otherwise. Either that, or he was as good at acting as Rachel Berry. “Dead? No, no, I didn’t know that. How terrible. That poor man.”

“Terrible,” I agreed. “We’re private detectives; we’ve been hired to poke around and ask a few questions. I understand the two of you had a recent disagreement?”

Ryerson paused a moment, clearly trying to figure out how much we had on him. 

“We know about the gage,” Anderson said calmly. “We know you slung it in Schuester’s bar, among other things. We know you gave him a cut of the profit, we know he told you to take it elsewhere when Rachel Berry put her foot down, and we _suspect_ you didn’t like that much. Maybe enough to put some of your harder product in Schuester’s food.”

“No!” Ryerson gasped. “I would never—I’m a peace-loving man, I swear. I’m a very docile person, I’d never hurt a living creature.”

“You just deal to them,” I pointed out. 

“My product’s good,” he insisted. “Harmless stuff. And sure, I wasn’t thrilled about Schuester cutting me loose, but I’d never cap him for it. It goes against my moral code.”

Moral code. What a gas. “If you weren’t involved,” I said, “then give me something to go on. Everyone liked Schuester. You’re the only person I’ve heard about who’s got a grudge against him.”

“If that’s what you think, son, you’ve got an education coming,” Ryerson snapped. “I’d stop by Sylvester’s burlesque joint if I was you. Have a chat with the old lady. She’ll fill your ears plenty. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had something to do with it herself, much as she hates William.” He stopped. “I suppose I should use the past tense now. Hated him.”

I thought about the times last year I’d darkened the door at Sylvester’s place, remembered the tall woman in the red victory suit barking orders at her girls, anger twisting her face. Boy, I didn’t want to go back. “Hated him? What’s Will Schuester got to do with Sylvester’s?”

“You don’t know?” Ryerson let out a barking laugh with more scorn in it than real humor. “He took two of her girls, her stars. Santana and who’s-her-face, the dotty blonde. They used to work for Sylvester, but dear William promised them more stage time and a better pay rate if they came over to McKinley’s. Better treatment, too.”

“I take it Sylvester wasn’t happy,” Anderson said dryly. 

“You take it correctly. I heard that when she found out those girls were gone she screamed so loudly a dancer standing nearby went deaf on the spot. What’s that thing the gangster pictures are always on about? Motive. Sylvester’s got plenty of motive. Now that William’s dead, those girls of hers just might come back.”

“How do we know you’re not sending us off on a wild goose chase?” I asked. “You’ve got plenty of motive yourself, after all.”

“I suppose you don’t know, do you,” Ryerson said. If it was possible for a short man to look down his nose at a taller one, he was doing that to me. “And I don’t have to speak to you a minute more if I don’t feel like it. This is still a free country, gentlemen, thanks to Misters Roosevelt, Truman, and our boys in khaki. I’ll bid you good day now and head back to my establishment, in hopes that the young man I was speaking with earlier hasn’t fled the building.”

Anderson had an expression on his face like disgust. “Leave that kid alone,” he blurted out, harsher than I was used to hearing from him. I looked at him in surprise. “He’s just—he’s a kid, Ryerson. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“I’d suggest to you, sir,” Ryerson said softly, “that the ‘kid,' as you call him, knows precisely what he’s doing. Once more, good day.”

And with that announcement, he spun about and walked away, head held high. 

“The hell was that?” I asked my partner, just as soon as Ryerson was out of earshot. “And what do you care about some queer kid, anyway? Ryerson’s right. Their kind grows up fast. He knows what he’s getting himself into.”

“Sam,” Anderson said, and I startled a bit at the use of my Christian name. We didn’t do that with each other, not hardly. His voice was tired, not unkind. “You’re a good friend. Better than any I’ve had since I was a kid. But what you know about some things couldn’t fill a can of beans.”

I began to protest. He cut me off. 

“Look, why don’t you go check out Sylvester’s,” he said, squinting past Ryerson’s retreating back, looking out to where the sun was chasing a distant rooftop. “I’ll keep on Ryerson tonight, make sure he’s a dead end so we can tie him up and put him away.”

Something sounded odd in that statement, felt odd to me too, but I didn’t trust Ryerson as far as I could throw him, and keeping Anderson on his tail wasn’t a bad idea. I nodded, not sure what I could say no to, wondering why I was looking for a reason.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s fine. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Watch yourself around him, all right?”

Anderson promised, striding off down the alley to follow Ryerson before he’d finished his sentence. Somehow I had a feeling he hadn’t really heard me. 

“Be careful, pal,” I called after him again. 

I was giving him a warning. I didn’t know until later how much we both needed to hear it.


	5. Chapter 5

Sylvester’s hadn’t changed a bit since I’d last visited. Somehow I had the feeling it never would. World wars would come and go, dictators would rise and fall, whole cities might be hollowed by nuclear bombs, but I could push in the thick carved door and inhale the warning scent of sweat and perfume until Judgment Day. 

The walls were papered with striped white-and-red panels, the stage curtains a rich velvet that put me in mind of dried blood. Booths and tables pocked the room, arranged to give the audience the best possible views. It was past the dinner hour, nearing show time, and so I wasn’t the only customer milling about and looking around.

I felt her looking at me before I saw her. 

She was the kind of dame who made you feel like a Catholic schoolboy about to get punished, never mind your religion or your age or what you’d done. I’d seen grown men shake underneath her stare. The president himself would stammer if she glared at him with those marble-blue eyes long enough. 

I turned around, and sure enough, there she was, clad in the same red victory suit I remembered her wearing the last time I’d been around. Her arms were crossed, her legs planted wide like a man’s.

“Mrs. Sylvester,” I said, and took off my hat, inclining my head. She wore no ring, and I’d never heard that a Mr. Sylvester existed, but most people ‘round these parts gave her the respect of a matrimonial title. A bit like throwing a chunk of meat to a lion in hopes it might look on you favorably and let aside its plans to eat you. “Don’t know if you remember me, but I used to come in here a couple of years ago. The name’s Sam Evans. I’m a detective now. Private hire.”

Sylvester gave me a quick up-and-down. I felt my legs quake a bit and forced myself to steady them. 

“It’s a real shame the war’s over,” she announced, “and I’m not just saying that because I’m sick of General MacArthur calling me late at night to reminisce about the sweaty bamboo pleasures we had in Luzon. Those inflated lips of yours would’ve made excellent bicycle tires during rubber rations.”

“All right,” I said, even though it wasn’t and she scared me. “I take it you’ve heard about Will Schuester?” No point in pretending she didn’t have eyes in every competitor’s joint from Boyle Heights to Wilshire.

“You know what, Lindbergh Baby, I’m feeling myself get slower each second I waste talking to you, so I’m gonna skip right over pleasantries. Becky?” she called, glancing over her shoulder, and in seconds a tiny blonde girl appeared carrying a clipboard while I was still wondering what pleasantries Sylvester thought she’d offered me. “He wants to find out what I know about Curly Top getting his tab called. Take his questions. I’ve got a curtain rising in five minutes.”

“You got it,” the girl said cheerfully, and then I got a second glance at her face. I tried not to stare, not wanting to be rude. Something was off about her. A mongoloid? Was that the right word? I’d seen a picture once in my high school biology book. Never met one in person.

Sylvester’s sharp gaze was on me again. I felt it like a burn. “You speak to this girl exactly the same way you’d speak to me,” she ordered, and there was something in the command that let me know if I didn’t obey her I might end up seeing Schuester again real soon. 

“Yes, ma’am,” I said quickly.

“Two weeks ago, I informed a certain leading surgeon and pillar of the community who frequents this establishment that his painfully bizarre obsession with women’s armpits might get leaked to the Times unless he pulled some strings for me. Now Becky and I have matching fingerprints. So far that intensely complicated surgery hasn’t really paid off for whatever reason, but I’m counting on some hilarious mix-ups in the future.” She trained a single finger at me. I had a feeling she whetted it on a stone each morning, like a knife. “The point, Carol Flynn, is that Miss Jackson is my surrogate in every possible way. I expect you to treat her with total respect.”

“Don’t you worry, Chief,” Becky Jackson said, wrinkling her nose as if she smelled something bad. “I’ll handle him. You might want to check on that new girl before the show starts. She’s got a shiner bigger than Frank Sinatra’s bank account. I told you Kitty can’t control her high kicks.”

Sylvester swore loudly and strode off, her victory suit glinting in the dim light like armor. I was alone with Miss Jackson, who didn’t like me much, if her glare was any indicator. A lot like her employer’s and nearly just as effective. 

“I, uh,” I stammered, not sure any longer how to go about this. “I was hoping to find out if Mrs. Sylvester knew anything about Will Schuester’s death. The bar owner? McKinley’s? I heard she, uh, wasn’t a fan.”

Miss Jackson stared at me and didn’t answer. Had she understood me? I couldn’t tell. 

The din of Sylvester’s rose up in the silence between us, patrons bustling around, pulling out chairs, getting ready for the show to start. 

“I’m not accusing her of anything,” I said, increasingly uncomfortable. I didn’t like the way Miss Jackson was watching me. “It might’ve been natural causes. I’ve been hired to check out some other options.”

She snorted. “I bet I know who hired you. That Santana Lopez.”

“Santana Lopez?” I searched my brain for a memory. One of the girls who sang with the Troubletones, wasn’t she? “No, not Santana Lopez. Well, not directly. Why would you say you bet Santana Lopez hired me? Is there bad blood between her and Syl—Mrs. Sylvester?”

“Santana wanted to be Head Assistant here.” Miss Jackson tossed her head. “She’d been working hard to get it for a long time. But then I came along last year and I got the job because I’m better than she is and the Chief likes me more than her. Santana was _angry_. She said an awful lot of mean things to Mrs. Sylvester before she left for Will Schuester’s bar. If you ask me—”

“I’m asking,” I said. 

“She’s got something to do with Schuester croaking. I hear Santana doesn’t like that Rachel Berry getting so many solos over at McKinley’s. If I was you—” She made a face like she was glad that wasn’t true. “I’d spend more time looking at her and less at Mrs. Sylvester. Mrs. Sylvester doesn’t like people who make her mad. You know what happened to the last person who _really_ made her mad?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you,” she said, and snapped her clipboard right in my face, just a few inches away from my nose. I jumped. “He got shot to death by the Communist National Liberation Committee in Italy.”

“Are you talking about _Mussolini_?” I asked, disbelieving, but she’d already spun about on her heel and stalked off in a manner that mimicked her employer’s stride almost exactly. I let myself breathe a small sigh of relief, but it was a shallow one. Even if Becky Jackson hadn’t been serious—and there wasn’t any way that story could be true, was there?—I didn’t like what it suggested. Sylvester wasn’t the kind of woman to take a rivalry lying down. Schuester had crossed her, that much was obvious, and she sure didn’t want to talk about it. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I could tell when I was being given the brush-off. 

And then there was Santana Lopez. So she’d wanted solos of her own, and Schuester had been tight with them, favoring Miss Berry. The more I thought about both of them, Sylvester and Lopez, the more sense it made that one of them might be behind all this. An angry woman looking to take it out on the man she’d thought wronged her. One of the oldest stories in the book. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. 

The house lights dimmed while I was still standing in the middle of the room, lost in thought, and the stage lights rose. The curtains parted, revealing a woman in a costume just small enough to suggest possibilities, and as she sauntered out on stage my jaw loosened a bit, the rest of my body tensing simultaneously in recognition. 

She’d been the reason I’d stopped going to Sylvester’s before my tours. Quinn Fabray, the saddest girl I’d ever known. Maybe the prettiest too—only now, I thought, she had some competition. We’d dated for a month or two, and I’d been head over heels, wanted to get serious about her, more serious than she’d been okay with. After I’d mentioned the word marriage—too fast, I know that now—she’d bolted, and a week later I’d found out she was with someone else, a married man thirty years her senior. I couldn’t visit Sylvester’s after that, couldn’t see her anymore knowing I’d lost the closest chance to love I’d ever had. Might ever get. And then the war came. For a while, I’d been distracted.

“Hey, buddy, siddown, you’re blocking the view,” someone hissed to my left. 

On stage, Quinn spun in our direction, not seeing me, the lights keeping her blind and smiling. The beads on her short dress glittered as they swung. 

I couldn’t stay. Not for any number of reasons. 

“I said siddown—“

No sitting for me, not here, not while she danced up on that stage and whatever we had together before I’d gone to war lay flat between us like a dead road no longer on anyone’s map. I looked away, wondering as I did if Sylvester or her toady was watching, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. And I walked out into the night. Fast.


	6. Chapter 6

Santana Lopez was a knockout and a half. A punch with razor-sharp knuckles.

I hadn’t noticed her much onstage—my eyes had been occupied elsewhere when the Troubletones were performing—but I couldn’t see now how I’d missed that face, that body. She seemed to be enjoying my discomfort, not unlike Becky Jackson had the day before. The dame had one of those penetrating stares, the kind that went right inside me. I felt like she saw the awkward kid underneath the bluster I put on each day along with my suit. She was a knockout, sure, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to get much closer to her than I already was, if you know what I mean. 

“Yeah,” she said, exchanging glances with her two girlfriends, who flanked her like sleek weapons, one on each side. We’d arranged to speak with them inside McKinley’s, and we were standing in front of that sad little stage in back, which somehow seemed even sadder when there was daylight coming in the bar’s small windows. “Yeah, we were gunning for more solos, sure we were. Of course we wanted some of Berry’s spotlight. That a crime now, Fishmouth? To _strategize_?”

“I’d appreciate it if you took a different tone with my partner,” Anderson said, polite as always, firmer than usual. He had circles under his eyes from a late night shadowing Ryerson. Nothing much had happened, he’d told me, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. He couldn’t look right at me as he said it. 

“I’m sure you would,” she sneered, and gave him a leering glance, first up, then down. “Anyways, I don’t see as I gotta be nice to either of you if I don’t want. You’re not the cops. You’re just a fifth-rate ringer for Tony Bennett—” She nodded at Anderson. “And you, sunshine, you’re Quinn Fabray’s leavings.”

Too late, I remembered she’d worked at Sylvester’s. My belly twisted. Of course she knew Quinn. I wondered how well. What Quinn had told her. What Santana Lopez knew about me.

“I don’t have to give you two anything. Rachel Berry doesn’t tell me what to do. Not now. Not ever.”

“And how about Will Schuester? He tell you what to do?”

I caught a quick glance between the two other girls behind Santana’s back, and wondered what all that was about. 

“Will?” Her mouth wrinkled in contempt. “Ugh, that wet rag. He did whatever _she_ wanted. She told him to jump, he asked how high. He didn’t notice or care he had other stars in the making.”

“So you poisoned him.”

“You’re not very good at listening, are you, Lady Lips? I said we didn’t do a damn thing to Will. I’m not all that sorry he’s dead, I’ll say that much, but I didn’t do him in. And neither did these two.” She jerked her thumbs in the direction of the other girls, who nodded as if on cue. 

“I’m sorry he’s dead,” the blonde offered. “He was the first person who told me I could sing. Now I can’t stop. I was just singing right before you came in and when you leave I’m probably going to sing again. The doctors can’t understand it. I’m a medical mystery and pretty soon I might join a traveling circus. It never would’ve happened without Mr. Schuester.” 

Santana Lopez smiled at the blonde. Her whole face softened considerably. “I know, Britt,” she said. “I know you liked him.” 

“How about you?” I asked the other girl, deciding it wasn’t much use to keep questioning Lopez. “Miss—? I’m sorry, I don’t know your last name.”

When the girl nodded, acknowledging me, it dislodged the Veronica Lake wave of thick dark hair hiding half her face. “Tina Cohen-Chang. And I don’t know anything about what happened to Will either. None of us hurt him. Even if we wanted to, and I’m not saying we did, it wouldn’t be in our best interest. How could we ever get him to give us a solo if he was dead?” She sighed. “Now I’ll never get a chance to prove myself. I wonder if Sylvester’s is hiring.”

I had to admit, her point hadn’t occurred to me yet. With Will dead, the Troubletones were sealed along with him. A dead manager meant no more solos for anyone. Why would Santana Lopez or anyone else want Schuester six feet under if it meant their chance in the spotlight went from slim to nonexistent? I was stumped.

“That twenty-watt light bulb in your head just lit up for the first time?” Miss Lopez asked me, and I jumped a little. She sure had a real nose for weakness. “I said it before and I’ll say it again so it gets through your thick skull: none of us killed Schuester. This ain’t the movies, Sam Evans, and you’re sure as hell no Phil Marlowe. Might want to sharpen a few of your tools before you try to play with the big kids.”

“Leave him alone, Santana.”

I knew that voice. If I was telling the truth, I’d conjured it in my head the past two nights, just before sleep.

We all turned to look at her, standing in the doorway, and damn if she wasn’t even more beautiful than the last time I’d seen her. Had it only been three days ago? It felt like years, and it felt like no time had passed at all, too. 

“Miss Jones,” I managed, because she was looking at me. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Mr. Evans.” She walked over to us, smiling at me, that gorgeous lush mouth ripening with pleasure. I suddenly wanted to kiss her more than I’d wanted anything in years. “Santana, you think you can bring yourself to act like a lady, or do I have to step in here and make some apologies for you?”

Santana looked down and muttered something resentful under her breath I didn’t quite catch, something about Bessie Smith and queening around and putting on airs. Maybe Rachel Berry didn’t tell Santana what to do, but it was clear Mercedes Jones could. 

“I’m sorry about that,” Miss Jones told me in a low voice. “They’re just upset. You understand. Will was good to us, you know. He really cared. And for him to end up like he did—” She swallowed, visibly upset. “It’s been hard on us.”

“I’ve got another handkerchief, if you need one,” Anderson offered, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“You can use my arm,” the blonde said, offering it with a worried look.

“No,” Miss Jones said, and fumbled around in her handbag. “No, I still have the one you gave me earlier, Mr. Anderson, thank you. I didn’t mean to interrupt your questions, I just came by to—to check on a few things. I’ll get out of your hair.”

I couldn’t help but answer, “On the contrary, Miss Jones, I hope you’ll stay in it. My hair, I mean.” _Aw, hell, Sam_ , I thought, wanting to smack myself. _You numbskull_. “What I mean to say is that you’re no bother at all. I’m glad you’re here. And we’re through, as a matter of fact, so you haven’t interrupted anything.”

Santana Lopez laughed, clearly pleased to watch me trip over my words. 

“I’m glad to hear it.” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “That you’re finished. Selfishly glad. I’m, well—if you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Evans?”

“Yes?” I asked, not daring to hope. 

“I haven’t eaten today,” she said. “I’ve been too upset. About a lot of things. But I—I think I could, if you took me for a bite to eat somewhere, an early supper? Maybe De Medici’s, down on Fountain? I hope I’m not being too forward asking you like this, but I have a feeling you’re the kind of man who prefers it when a girl speaks her mind.”

She could’ve asked me to take her to the moon. I would’ve done it without a second thought. “Be glad to, Miss Jones,” I said, and turned to Anderson. “Hey, pal, would you mind taking a trip down to the coroner’s for me? They should have the preliminary autopsy report ready by now. That should answer some of our questions.”

“I think I can handle that,” he answered, smiling at both of us. “You think you can handle dinner with this lovely lady all by yourself?”

I tried to keep the heat from reaching my cheeks. It didn’t work.

“If he can’t, Mr. Anderson,” Miss Jones said, giving me a long, measured look, “I’ll handle him.”


	7. Chapter 7

Over dinner at De Medici’s she told me about herself. Twenty-four years old, nearly twenty-five, from a small little nothing town in Georgia. Made her way to Los Angeles during the war, in ’43, after her fiancé died in the Pacific. It turned out he’d been stationed with my buddy Mike at Fort Jackson during training, and when we put two and two together, she had a soft, sad smile on her face. She liked books sometimes, and fashion all the time. And movies, she sure liked those. We had that last one in common. She loved James Cagney and Bogart, just like me, and she did a mean impression of a moll, nearly as good as my Cagney. I’d never talked with a girl like this about pictures, not even with Quinn. Like talking with a buddy, only instead I was sitting across from a woman whose grin turned my stomach upside down. 

It made me a little dizzy, talking with her, and it wasn’t until our entrees arrived that I figured out it wasn’t vertigo after all, it was happiness. 

The waiter gave me an ugly stare as he dropped our plates on the table, glancing over at Miss Jones to indicate where his displeasure came from. I stared back, my heart thumping, silently daring him to say something about whites and coloreds mixing so I’d have an excuse to knock the daylights out of him, but he huffed instead and left. 

Miss Jones didn’t notice. Or maybe she pretended not to.

“I’ve always wanted to make it big,” she said, between bites of spaghetti. “I’ve got dreams, Mr. Evans. Real dreams. Just as big as Rachel’s, even if I don’t shout mine as loud as she does.”

“You want to be in the movies?” I admired her pluck, even though I had my doubts about her chances. Hard enough to make it in this town as a white girl. Still, she had a way of making me feel like it was inevitable.

“Sure. That, or on stage. Just as long as I get to sing in front of a crowd, I’m not too particular. That’s when I shine. That’s when I feel like I’m really something special. How about you, Mr. Evans? You got a dream of your own?”

“Sam,” I said. “Call me Sam, please. And I can’t say as I have. I guess you could say I’m living as near to my dream as I’m gonna get.” I considered this for a moment. All I’d ever really wanted out of life was four walls and a roof, a job that paid the bills and didn’t have a boss breathing down my neck, and enough spare change to take me to the movies a few nights a week. 

“No sweetheart?” she asked, pointedly, when I told her. 

I blushed again. I couldn’t help it. “I wouldn’t exactly turn one down, no,” I said. “It’s just—I haven’t had many offers lately.” It felt like Quinn Fabray was whispering in my ear, her warm hand on my arm, taking me back to what we’d had. I wanted to shake my head to get her out. She’d been the last girl I’d cared about. Since then I’d gone out with one or two, mostly because I felt like I should, but they hadn’t been anything to write home about. 

Looking at Mercedes Jones across the table, though, I was beginning to think that maybe my luck in the dame department was changing. Beautiful, smart, determined, confident. This wasn’t just a girl I liked. I admired her. Maybe even envied her a little. She carried herself with her head held high, knowing exactly how much she was worth.

A corner of her lovely mouth lifted. “No offers lately? I have to say, I’m surprised.”

“Well, Miss Jones,” I said, deciding to go for it, hoping I wasn’t mistaken, “I’ll go you one better: I’m interested.”

“Mercedes,” she corrected. “And I’m glad you finally got around to admitting it.”

There were about a thousand volts of electricity jumping back and forth across our little table, enough to power Hollywood for a week. I felt it, enough to raise the hair on my arms, and judging by the way she was looking at me, maybe Mercedes felt it too. 

Not ready to let her go, I suggested we get a drink somewhere, a nice place, maybe Musso and Frank’s. She agreed fast enough to let me know she’d been thinking the same thing, and when she smiled at me the current between us snapped. 

We’d been at dinner for three hours, though, and it was getting cold as the night got older. The city pulled the marine layer over its houses and streets like a thick gray blanket, dropping the temperature a good fifteen or twenty degrees. I’d left my good coat at our office that morning, not knowing where the day would take me, and so we made for Franklin and Bronson in my Oldsmobile first thing. My eyes stayed fixed on the road so I wouldn’t get nervous glancing over at her, wondering when she might come to her senses about me.

“I’ll just wait here while you go in,” she said as I pulled up to the curb, tucking her mink stole around her shoulders against the sharp air. “My heels are pinching a bit.”

I said, not too steady, “Sure.”

“Sam,” she said, and that’s when I turned my head. Her hair was silhouetted against the streetlight. “I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Sure you’re not,” I answered, and the relief in it was probably plain, because she reached across the seats and patted my hand. 

My steps up the three flights of stairs were light and fast, keys already in my hand before I’d even reached our office. I felt like flying. 

It’s no excuse for it, not really, but my brain was filled to bursting with Mercedes and where the night might take us; there wasn’t a damn bit of room in it for paying attention to my surroundings. It’s why I didn’t think about the shuffled sounds as I turned the lock, pushed the door in, even as some part of me wondered at how strange it was, noises in our office after dark when nobody should be there. 

The lamp wasn’t on, but the streetlamp outside—the one that made Mercedes glow—filtered its way into the room, giving me just enough light to see. Not that seeing was doing me much good at the moment, because I couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on. 

“Anderson?” I said stupidly, because of course it was. 

He stood in the center of the room, shirt unbuttoned halfway to his waist, tie askew, and he wasn’t alone. His company was just a few steps away, fully dressed, sitting alert and ready on Anderson’s desk. It took me a second, but I recognized him. Remembered that pretty face, smooth and flawless as new ceramic. 

“I didn’t, I thought you were—” Anderson glanced over at the pale kid. “Oh, God. Evans, I swear, I didn’t want you to—”

It was his expression more than anything that clued me in on what was happening. Not that his shirt was undone, or the presence of Ryerson’s prey in our office, or that the kid gripped Anderson’s desk as he sat on it like he had a right to be there. No, it was Anderson’s expression, misery hollowing his face right in front of my eyes.

I think I said something, although I don’t recall what exactly, a muttered excuse for being there in the first place, and I managed to close the door and get out of our office, my feet taking me several steps back into the hallway on their own accord. My back pressed firm against the fading, peeling wall as I tried to reason out what I’d just seen. Nobody would ever give me a medal for smarts, but I wasn’t so dumb that I couldn’t guess what was happening in that room right before I’d entered. 

Jesus. Was there any other answer for it? Anderson was my closest friend, better than any I’d had since I was a kid. I didn’t want to leap to conclusions. He deserved better than that. Wouldn’t I have known if he was—like that? Wouldn’t there be some way to tell, some sign? Men like that were dandies and nancies, as far as I knew, more woman than man, and Anderson was a former cop, a vet with honors, a buddy of mine. No, there was some mistake. I must’ve gotten the wrong impression, jumped to easy conclusions when the real answer had to be something else.

While I was doing my best to sort out what that answer could be, the door opened again and I looked up to see Ryerson’s kid ( _Anderson’s kid_ , my mind corrected, and I pushed that thought away) coming towards me. He was wearing a thick brown coat that seemed too fancy for someone like him, too rich. In the good light of the hallway his face looked even paler then I’d thought. It was my first time seeing him in the open, I realized. Not covered in shadows. 

“Blaine’s a good man,” the kid offered, startling me. His voice was light, hesitant. “He really is. I know this is none of my business, but I sincerely hope you won’t let this—me—come between you two. You mean a lot to him. As a friend and a partner. He told me.”

“You’re right,” I said, trying to keep my composure. “It’s none of your business. You’d be better off getting out of here, all right?”

The kid raised his hands, indicating he’d back off. 

“This isn’t just a fling for me,” he said softly. “I like him. And I think he feels the same way.”

If I’d had any doubt about what this was between them, that sealed it. I felt gut-kicked.

“Kurt, he’s right. You should go. Please.”

This from the doorway. Anderson’s face looked years older. 

The kid—Kurt—nodded and took off for the stairwell without another word, leaving me with Anderson to face something I didn’t want to realize.

I stared down at my shoes. They needed shining. 

Neither of us spoke for at least a minute. 

“You have to understand,” Anderson said finally, “I didn’t want you to know about this. I don’t want to _be_ like this.”

“How long?” I managed, even though I didn’t think I could stand to hear the answer.

“A long time. Since I was a kid, I guess. It doesn’t happen often. I try to control it, but sometimes I can’t help myself and—I slip. That’s really why I didn’t want to go back to the force after the war. I wasn’t too careful one time and some of the guys, they found out about me. Threatened to go up the chain of command if I didn’t quit. So I signed up and shipped out. I had to.” 

“You said you slipped,” I repeated, wanting to believe him. “That’s what this was with this kid. A slip. And you’re done with him.”

He made a sputtering sound. “Yes,” he said, and then, “I think so. I _want_ to be done.”

By now I knew every single stitch on the tongue of my shoes by heart. I could draw you a map. Anderson wanted to be done, and I wanted to be sick. How could my best pal be queer? We’d shared an office and a partnership for nearly a year. We’d crawled on beaches together halfway across the world, bullets whistling past our ears. I’d wanted to be around him, enjoyed his company more than anyone else’s. What did that say about me? 

“—and I’ll understand,” Anderson was saying, “if you want to dissolve the business.”

That’s when I wrenched my gaze away from my shoes and looked at him. He seemed as sick as I was, only at himself, and that’s when I started to imagine for the first time how it might be. How it would feel to want something when you weren’t supposed to want it in the first place. Want it badly enough to go against common sense and risk your reputation, your friends, your place in the world.

For some reason, I thought about our waiter at De Medici’s. 

“No,” I told him, and I meant it. “I don’t want that.” Whatever I wanted, whatever I felt about all this, beyond sick—and I still wasn’t sure—that didn’t seem right. He’d been there for me through a war, through nearly a year of partnership. I owed him more than a goodbye. “We’re not closing shop.”

“Really?” For the first time since I’d walked in on him, his expression lightened. 

“Really,” I confirmed. 

He closed his eyes. Relaxed visibly. “I’m glad,” he said, and his words were heavy, filled with the weight of real relief. “Thanks, Evans.”

“Sure,” I mumbled, not knowing what to say. Mercedes was still down in the car waiting for me, I realized with a small shock. Probably wondering what the hell had happened. “Hey—I gotta go.”

He made some affirming gesture in my direction, letting me know he was just as ready for this to be over as I was, and as I turned, he blurted out, “The autopsy report on Will Schuester. The coroner finished it. I stopped by after I left McKinley’s like you asked.”

I paused, oddly grateful for the abrupt change of subject. “Yeah? What’s the cause of death?”

“Barbiturate overdose. Ground up fine and probably mixed into his dinner, from what the coroner could tell. Miss Berry had it right all along. Schuester _was_ murdered. Look, Evans, I have to ask. Are we all right? You and me?”

We weren’t close to it yet, but I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t do that to him. So I said, because I wanted it to be true some day: “Yeah, pal. We’re all right.” 

He put his face in his hands. “That’s good,” he said, muffled, and his voice shook. “That’s good.”

Each step down the stairwell felt like a knock against my overloaded head from everything I knew and didn’t understand yet. 

As soon as Mercedes saw me, her expression shifted from one of displeasure at being kept so long to one of concern. “Sam?” she asked as I got into the front seat. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said automatically. “I ran into my partner upstairs, got to talking. I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long.”

“You don’t have your coat.”

All that and I’d forgotten to grab my coat. I rubbed at my arm. “It’s all right,” I said. “I decided I wasn’t cold after all.” For some reason, I didn’t feel like telling her about the coroner’s report, and I knew I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell her the rest. Right now I just wanted to forget it all for at least a night. Lose myself in her eyes and smile. “Are you ready for that drink?”

She put her hand over my own, the one rubbing at my arm, and stilled me. “I’ve been thinking about it, Sam,” she said softly, “and if you don’t mind, I’d rather have that drink at my place.”

Well, damn if I didn’t know what that meant. My heart started to pound, but I covered it up by curling my mouth and delivering my best Cagney. “What’s your angle, sister?” I asked, quoting his famous line from _The Roaring Twenties_ , my favorite one of his films. “What bank do ya want me to stick up, who do ya want killed, and whaddya want first?”

That’s when she leaned over and kissed me for the first time. Her mouth moved gently on mine. Each second it lasted I could feel the whole dirty rotten world slipping away from us until we were the only ones left, here in my car alone on a cold, clear December night.

“That’s what I want,” she whispered, her hand cupping my face. “That first.”


	8. Chapter 8

She opened the door to her small apartment with some murmured half-sentences about not wanting me to think she did this with every guy who crossed her path, that she knew I was special. I assured her that I wasn’t the kind of man who’d judge her for taking me home. I was beginning to know her, or so I thought. I believed she was the kind of woman who saw what she wanted, and tried to take it, and if she wanted me? Well, I wanted her just as much. Probably more. I didn’t see a damn thing wrong with that.

And maybe there were some things I was trying to prove to myself, but just then I wasn’t entertaining those thoughts too closely. Not when the curve of her hip was drowning out every sensible notion I’d ever had.

Half a drink, a few attempts at respectability and some twenty minutes later we were in her narrow bed with the view of the brick building opposite. The old mattress creaked as we moved together. I couldn’t believe my luck, couldn’t believe how beautiful she was stretching in my arms, how her skin shone smooth in the bad light. Her breasts were full and glorious, too big for hands twice the size of mine to cover. I wanted to bury my face between them, but didn’t know how to ask for permission. How do you ask for something like that?

“Sam,” she murmured, and drew my hand beneath her skirt. I didn’t need to be told twice. There was heat beneath my fingers and her underthings, telling me what her words didn’t, and she arched a little at my touch, her breath catching. 

I said: “I know, honey.” Daring the endearment, breathless too. 

She reached down and unfastened her skirt, squirming out of it as she lifted her hips.

As old as fate and luck let me get I’ll never forget that hour with her. She let me taste her during our lovemaking, was eager for it, even, and she pressed her thighs on either side of my head, bracing herself as she swelled wet and hot against my mouth. Her flavor was sharp on my tongue but good. Familiar, like something I’d learned once but forgotten along the way. 

When she came my body stuttered down into the hard mattress in reaction, unable to control itself. Knowing what it felt like to make her feel good, I never wanted to do another thing with my life besides. I wanted to shout my happiness from the roof of City Hall, and I nearly did the first time I entered her, as she wrapped her legs around my lower back and pulled me in deep. 

That night I slept in that narrow bed pinned between her and the wall. Despite the circumstances it was a better sleep than I’d had any night before or any night since. I dreamed a little. She was there.

Morning light opened my eyes before I was ready, but once I’d blinked a few times there was no denying the day. I struggled out of bed with care, trying not to wake Mercedes. As I stood up, she muttered once or twice in her sleep and rolled over, taking back some of the space I’d left. I resisted the urge to tuck in the blankets around her, and felt a fool for even having the thought in the first place. 

Out of bed successfully, I found my trousers and shirt, wriggling into them, nearly falling over in the process. Mercedes’s bedroom was pretty bare, a dresser, mirror, and standing lamp the only other furniture besides her bed. Maybe she hadn’t lived here long? I tried to remember if she’d told me anything about her place the previous night, if she had a roommate or when she’d moved to this part of the city. I wanted to know all about her. 

Hell, I had it bad. 

I imagined writing my mother in Tennessee about Mercedes. Telling her everything. _I found a girl, Ma_ , I’d say, _the perfect girl for me._ Telling her everything except one detail, hoping she’d form an opinion of Mercedes good enough to hold when she found out what I wished wouldn’t be a problem. What I knew would have to be, for her and nearly everyone else.

No, I wouldn’t think about that now. Not yet.

A cigarette. I’d smoke a cigarette, sit in her small kitchen, wait for Mercedes to wake up and try not to think about my mother or the waiter at De Medici’s or what I knew about Anderson or the world or any of it. I’d go over the Schuester case, that’s what I’d do. I’d puzzle out this new information from the coroner and see if I could make heads or tails out of it.

Problem was, though, I’d recently finished a pack and hadn’t bought a new one to replace it. Mercedes smoked; she’d pulled out a stick in the car yesterday, lighting it with her own Zippo. She wouldn’t mind me bumming one off of her, I figured. Her handbag was just sitting on top of the dresser, the mouth of it open, inviting me. 

Anderson’s handkerchief was folded at the top, but below it I found a half-empty pack and the lighter I’d remembered seeing last night. I took it out first, reminding myself I should buy one of my own—much nicer to have than matchbooks—but something at its base caught my eye. 

A dusting of something white. Was it part of the lighter case? I swiped my finger along it and little crumbs of the stuff stuck to my skin. No, not a part of it. I turned over the lighter. There was more of the stuff on the bottom. As if she’d used it to grind something, maybe. A kind of pestle.

On an impulse, I touched my finger to my tongue. The taste was bitter. 

“Barbiturates,” I muttered out loud, before I knew what I was saying. 

It was a coincidence. Had to be, because I couldn’t stand to think about what it might mean if it weren’t. Anyone could grind up anything for any reason, couldn’t they? And Mercedes was—she wasn’t—

Footsteps behind me. 

I started to turn around, too late. Something hard and unforgiving came down on my head, and I went out like a light, falling to the floor.


	9. Chapter 9

The next thing I knew, I was lifting my head from my chest, groggy from the hit I’d taken, and realized I was still in the bedroom, tied to a flimsy chair not worth the effort spent to build it.

“Don’t move,” I heard, and I squinted, my vision coming back slowly. Mercedes was in front of me, dressed now in a smart suit. She was pointing a small pearl-handled Derringer at my face. “Don’t try to get loose. I know my knots, Sam. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Mercedes?” This was a bad dream. Had to be. “What—?”

“You didn’t have to go in my purse,” she said, and she looked honestly sorry about all of it. “Nobody said you could go rooting around in my purse. If you hadn’t, neither of us would be in this position. I don’t want to hurt you. Really I don’t.”

Memory trickled back bit by bit until I had it again: the Zippo lighter dusted with white. No, with ground-up barbiturates. She’d done it. She’d murdered Will Schuester. 

“You killed him,” I said, because I needed her to deny it. She didn’t. Her hand holding the gun shook. “Mercedes, _why_?” 

I had other questions, too, questions that weren’t as pressing but needled at me still. How long had I been out? How the hell had she had enough strength to lift my dead weight into this chair all on her own? I was between the bed and the dresser, not near enough to either to make a difference. Unless I got out of these ropes, I couldn’t see how this was going to end any way but badly for me. 

“I needed a fair chance,” she said simply. “I need a fair chance just like everyone else, all those other girls out there. That’s all I want. I just needed a solo or two, but he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t let me shine like I know I can, don’t you see? I tried and tried to convince him, but he only had eyes for Rachel. And then finally he said to stop pestering him, that I was plenty talented but that I had to earn my dues like everyone else and eventually it’d be my turn to shine. But that turn never came. He promised me, but it never came!” She bit her lower lip, a wretched, miserable look on her face that suddenly put me in mind of Anderson, how he’d been the previous night. “No one was looking out for me, Sam. No one ever has. I had to look out for myself. I saw a chance and I took it.”

“I don’t—” Jesus, my head was hurting. I reached to rub it, forgetting that my hands were bound behind me. “I don’t understand. How would killing Will help you get a solo?” 

“He wasn’t supposed to die,” she blurted out. “I didn’t know that would happen. You have to believe me, he was just supposed to get sick, I thought he would get sick for a little while and be out of commission. Not that he would die. I’m not a murderer.”

I wasn’t sure I believed her story, but she still hadn’t answered my question. “Mercedes, even if that’s true, I don’t get how taking Will out of the picture helps you. There’s no one around to run the bar if he’s gone, not to mention manage the Troubletones.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” a new voice said behind me, just outside the room. A woman’s voice. If it hadn’t been for the ropes keeping me tied to the chair, I might’ve fallen over with surprise. “No, I wouldn’t say that at all.”

Mercedes was all nerves, suddenly, her body straightening, eyes focused over my head where the voice’s owner was presumably standing. “You really think you should come in here?” she asked. “I only called you because I couldn’t figure out what to do, but if he sees you—”

“He’s as good as dead,” I heard, and then she stepped inside the room, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor as she walked in front of me. A woman in her late thirties, maybe, all big eyes and stick limbs, dressed up in a way the Duchess of Windsor might’ve envied. A real lady, by the look of her. Made up in all the right places. Skinny as hell, too thin to be as pretty as she might. There was a hard, anxious look to her, as if she was learning all the answers and didn’t appreciate them. Her hair was red, and even though it was styled in a tight bun there were little tendrils springing free: a fire about to get out of control. 

“Don’t worry,” she said to Mercedes. “I’ve got plenty of solvents. Your fingerprints won’t be anywhere on that gun by the time we’re finished here.”

Mercedes said softly: “Look, I want to talk about our options, okay? We don’t need to make any rash decisions.”

“What the hell’s going on?” I said. “Who’s this, Mercedes?”

The redhead’s teeth bared in a slight smile. A chill went down my back. It wasn’t a real smile, not by half. “I’m Emma Pillsbury,” she said. “Soon-to-have-been Mrs. William Schuester.”

God, if I thought I’d needed a cigarette before that was nothing to the way I felt now. I needed four cigarettes. “You’re Will’s fiancée,” I said. “The one Rachel Berry wanted to protect.”

She laughed. It was harsh and brittle. “Rachel Berry trying to protect me? That’s a gas. You think she was trying to protect me when she was dallying with my fiancé? You think she was looking out for me when she was on her back? I can’t imagine she would’ve had a good view from that position.”

“You mean Will was—?” I tried to find a polite word for it. “Seeing her?”

“I mean he was _screwing_ her,” she spat at me. I recoiled without meaning to, as much from the look of utter disgust and revulsion on her face as from the course language. 

As if she’d realized how far she’d gone and how much she needed to come back, Miss Pillsbury seemed to collect herself. She smoothed down the fabric of her long, thin skirt, in a gesture that looked like self-comfort. “I’ve known about it for two months,” she said, calmer now, catching Mercedes’s eye. “Thanks to this girl right here, who had enough of a conscience to let me know I was being made a fool of by some little harlot. And enough of an opportunistic streak to take advantage of a business proposal.”

“Please stop,” Mercedes said, still pointing the gun at me, watching me, but stealing glances in Miss Pillsbury’s direction. “We shouldn’t be telling him all this.”

“Who’s he going to tell?” Miss Pillsbury asked, sneering. “The worms? He can’t get out of this room alive, Mercedes. You know that.”

Panic flared in my chest. I had to keep her talking, had to keep both of them talking until I could figure out a plan. “What was the business proposal?”

“I couldn’t let him get away with it,” Miss Pillsbury said, appealing to me. Her eyes were wide, unsettling, taking up too much room on her face. “You understand that, don’t you? He made a mockery of everything we had together. Everything. I was a model girlfriend and fiancée. I cooked for him, I dolled up nicely, I was attentive to his every need. I let him touch me.” Her mouth twisted again with revulsion. “And he went and threw all of that away. There are rules, you know. There has to be order. You can’t defy the way things are supposed to be without severe consequences. And it just so happened that Mercedes here stood to gain from Will’s punishment. Really, all things said and done, it was a positive situation for both of us.”

I said: “Explain that to me. That’s what I don’t understand. What, exactly, did Mercedes have to gain from all of this?”

“It’s very simple. I stood to inherit McKinley’s, thanks to a change my fiancé made to his will shortly after we got engaged. McKinley’s is mine, now, as is management of the Troubletones, and I intend to keep it that way. In exchange for meting out a well-deserved punishment—”

“Cold-blooded murder,” I interrupted. It just slipped out. 

“A _punishment_ ,” Miss Pillsbury repeated, her brow furrowing with mild annoyance at being stopped. “Mercedes will be handsomely rewarded with all the solos she wants in the future. She’ll be my star, and with any luck, it’ll be the first stepping stone on her way to fame.”

“And all it took was the death of an innocent man,” I said, looking at Mercedes. “Small price to pay for stardom.”

“Sam,” she said, sounding miserable. “You’ve got to believe me, all she said was that it would make him sick—”

“The death of a _guilty_ man,” Miss Pillsbury corrected, “and a bullet to the temple of Miss Rachel Berry.”

Mercedes wheeled around to face Miss Pillsbury, clearly shocked. “No! That wasn’t part of the deal. I never said I’d hurt Rachel. I won’t do it!”

“I don’t think you understand, Mercedes,” Miss Pillsbury said calmly. “This isn’t up for negotiation. Rachel deserves to be punished just as much as Will did. Either you finish the job or I go to the police. I can name at least three people who saw you at the scene of the crime. Sandy Ryerson will admit to selling you the Seconal as soon as I lean on him. And your fingerprints on that Derringer aren’t going to help you out. Who do you think a jury’s going to believe? A poor bereaved fiancée who works part-time teaching school and volunteers at the VA hospital on weekends? Or _you_?”

“You’re insane,” Mercedes said, and her voice shook just enough. “You’re nuts. I never should’ve listened to you in the first place.”

Something changed in Miss Pillsbury’s face then. There was a light behind her eyes I didn’t like and didn’t want to see. “I’m not crazy,” she said quietly. “I’m not. Don’t call me that. There isn’t anything wrong with me.”

“You had your fiancé killed and you’re planning to have his lover killed too,” I said, knowing it was foolish but unable to stop myself. “I think that more than qualifies you for a cell in the loony bin.”

Miss Pillsbury shrieked, a sound that sent chills up my spine, and rushed towards me. To my surprise, Mercedes moved fast between us, pushing her back, hard, and Miss Pillsbury stumbled, her thin heels betraying her. “You’ll pay for saying that,” she hissed, “both of you,” and turned her attention to Mercedes, who wasted no time in jabbing the barrel of the Derringer in between her ribs. 

“I don’t want to hurt you, Emma,” Mercedes said, pleading. “Don’t make—”

Miss Pillsbury slapped her hard across the face, nails raking against the skin, drawing quick blood. Mercedes jerked with surprise at the impact, the gun jerking along with her, and then I heard the loud bang of a bullet singing through the chamber.

She staggered back almost before I’d realized what had happened and pressed a hand to her chest, blood blooming quick against the pale yellow ruffles of her blouse. It seeped around her fingers as it spread, staining her hand red.

“You shot me,” she said, her mouth a round pit of shock. “Oh. It hurts. It _hurts_.”

“Emma,” Mercedes whispered. “Emma, I’m so—” 

Miss Pillsbury’s legs buckled. She went down fast and hit the floor with a loud thump, hand still clutching her chest.

I stared at Mercedes, whose face was open with horror. “Oh, no,” she said, turning towards me. “Sam, you have to believe me. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Oh, sweet Lord, I can’t—you have to help me take care of this. Please, Sam, you have to help me. I need you.”

Mercedes was a murderer twice over. I knew that now. I knew she’d fed Will Schuester poison to get what she thought was rightfully hers in a world that would never give it to her. She’d shot Miss Pillsbury right in front of me. But she hadn’t meant to kill Schuester, she’d said. She wouldn’t have murdered Rachel Berry, she’d made that much clear, and Miss Pillsbury was an accident. It was bad, but it didn’t have to be.

Nobody knew what had happened. Not Anderson, not the other girls, nobody but Emma Pillsbury. And me. Mercedes and I could pin this all on Miss Pillsbury, if we wanted. The two of us together. 

She was looking at me with those big brown eyes of hers, imploring me. I thought about the men I’d shot in the Pacific, thought about those sons and fathers I’d sent to their graves in the name of war. I’d been honored for those killings. They’d had a parade for me and all the other boys. Murder wasn’t always as black-and-white as we liked to make it seem.

I thought about how she’d moved against me in the low light of her bedroom, her laughter when I’d imitated Cagney. Her understanding hand in mine, driving out everything else. Just an hour ago, I’d been willing to risk everything to keep reaching out for her. 

I had to make a decision. 

“Untie me,” I said, because I knew she would if I asked her. “Put the gun down and untie me.”

She nodded and set the Derringer down on the top of the dresser before kneeling next to me, setting her fingers to the knots. I watched her work, saw that she was shaking like a leaf, and I started to think, hard. I figured, by the time I was free, I’d know just what the hell I was going to do.

Next to me on the floor Emma Pillsbury’s body twitched once, startling both of us. She made a moaning noise, pure pain, past reason. Still alive. Not for long.

“I’ve gotta call the doctor,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t help worth a damn, but it was the right gesture to make. “We need to get our story straight before I do. No mistakes. We can’t afford a single one.”

“You mean—?” Hope opened on Mercedes’s face, the angry red scratches Emma gave her paling underneath her new optimism. She was beautiful, even now, and she looked just like the same woman I’d thought I’d known. Two people were dead at her hand. I couldn’t reconcile it. I didn’t want to reconcile it. I wanted to take her in my arms and forget everything about the last three days and my life turned upside down except the way her mouth felt on mine. 

The next words out of my mouth would be the first blind steps I took into a new world. I said, shaking too: “Yes, honey. I mean.”


End file.
